SPEAKING IN TONGUES To 12 December.
London.
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
by Andrew Bovell.
Duke of York’s Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 0844 871 7623
www.speakingintonguestheplay.com (£3 transaction fee for ‘phone and online bookings).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 September.
Str iking drama speaks with subtlety and depth.
Separate columns of light pick-out the characters. Then, in Alan Ayckbourn style, two couples on respective one-night stands share the same hotel bedroom, and sometimes the same dialogue - a sentence, or just a word. People do say the same sort of thing in such situations.
So far, so technically adept, as a neat, not-quite-glib comedy follows. But, as the recent Almeida British premiere of his later When the Rain Stops Falling showed, Australian playwright Andrew Bovell is a subtle strategist able to control dramatic complexities to gripping effect (Tongues later became the film Lantana, but don’t just rent the video. The play is the richer experience).
Post-interval things become more noirish, both in story and the new characters introduced. Instead of roaming pairs there are apparently single individuals. Links emerge between these people, all of them quietly edgy, bordering on neuroses or anxiety. If relationships bring angst, reference back to an event hanging like a loose end from the opening act shows the only character with no partner onstage being in the deepest trouble.
Thriller elements heighten character tension – a lone woman in a ‘phone kiosk at night, the lights of a car approaching on Lorna Heavey’s video, which also indicates the fate of the missing woman referred to throughout. Yet, whatever we find out about what happens to these people, they remain, in various degrees, unknowable in depth.
Ayckbourn’s 2004 Private Fears in Public Places also comes to mind. Through a very different storyline and approach, Bovell too shows how characters simultaneously seem ‘normal’ in their public-facing occupation, and have inner disturbances in their private existences.
The Australian playwright (here, only fellow-Australian Kerry Fox’s voice suggests the play’s country of origin) also has Tom Stoppard’s ability to plant suggestions forward and backward, using them for more than genre narrative, to create suspense, clinch a point about the alienation of modern society and, more deeply, the tension between normality and anarchy in every individual.
This fine play receives four lithe performances in Toby Frow’s fully-realised production. A fine evening that becomes better, and digs deeper, as it goes on.
Leon/Nick: John Simm.
John/Pete/Neil: Ian Hart.
Sonja/Valerie: Lucy Cohu.
Jane/Sarah: Kerry Fox.
Director: Toby Frow.
Designer: Ben Stone.
Lighting: Johanna Town.
Sound/Music: Richard Hammarton.
Choreographer: Scarlett Mackmin.
Video/Projection: Lorna Heavey.
Voice coach: Kate Godfrey.
Fight director: Alison de Burgh.
Assistant director: Lotte Wakeham.
Assistant lighting: Charlie Lucas.
2009-10-01 08:47:16